Hi

I Fucking Hate Family Therapy

So after a blessed two weeks off from it, I have to return to family therapy with my parents tonight. Thankfully. The maximum amount of sessions left is 5 because my parents are retiring to Southern Florida.

This is really I guess all my fault. Well, kinda? Yeah mostly. See I’m a 43 year old loser (yes, loser, at least per the common societal benchmarks for success; and it’s cool, I’m good with it) who lives in his parents’ house.

The reason I’m here is I kinda had a nervous breakdown a couple years back and I melted into a barely human semblance of myself and eventually lost my job. I didn’t have any savings of course because I’m a lifelong fuck up with money so it was live with my parents or be homeless. I don’t think I could make it in the streets so I really had no choice at all.

Well I don’t really don’t have any respect or love for one of my parents (let’s call them. X) and I have significant issues with the other (let’s call them Y) so being around them a lot is really tense. At one point I was actively avoiding X. I would get home from work, make some dinner, then head to my room, close my door, eat and eventually get high and pass out. Every now and then X or Y (usually X) would try to gain access to my room but I always locked the door and I never responded, regardless of whether I was asleep or not. They’ve said in previous therapy sessions that they just think I’m asleep. I ain’t trying to start another fight so I keep my mouth shut.

So X got furious that I was keeping to myself. I wasn’t cursing X out or being overtly mean. I was literally just keeping quiet and keeping to myself. This was an unacceptable offense. See, X needs me but I could not care less about X. So after several X and Y against me conversations, we ended up in weekly therapy.

Y, who I actually love and care about despite our issues, thinks the therapy has helped. The main goal of it was to improve the overall environment in the house with particular emphasis on my relationship with X.

Things aren’t really much better with X and me. I try but my hate for X is so intense and so visceral that my actual physical body tenses up like a threatened rattlesnake when X is anywhere near me. It’s involuntary. But I’ve been trying to pretend a little because, again, I love Y and that’s what Y wants to see.

I’m going to tell them tonight that I think the therapy is a waste of time. I’ll try to say it more diplomatically. If anything, the more I learn about my parents, the less I realize I have in common with them. And I’m not talking bullshit generation gap stuff like clothes and hair and music. I’m talking important shit like how to raise a child and whether or not to worship at the altar of materialism and – oh that’s right – whether or not I need to be repaired.

It’s not that being stuck in false emotional conversations with X during sessions and lying to Y about me actually believing there’s any chance to improve my relationship with X is the major problem. It does suck. It’s that BOTH X and Y believe I’m broken. They’ve said as much verbatim in multiple sessions. They have also lamented that they failed to raise me properly and it’s mostly their fault I’ve turned out this way.

You see what I’m getting at? I’m broken.

Y and X both believe that if I somehow magically cure my mental health conditions, I will suddenly be able to have a loving relationship with X. They just want me to “get better”.

You see, I’m the only one who is broken or needs to get better. Never is heard one discouraging word about their character or choices or behaviors.

I think maybe the most fucked up thing about therapy is that they categorize you with a condition that implies or outright states that you are less than the average person. Condition D (mine’s clinical depression with a healthy side of anxiety) prevents you from being fully activated person.

After you hear that over and over for 22 years, you come to believe it fully. I certainly did.

But then I had a breakdown and was living dead for almost 2 years. It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced and that’s saying something considering I’ve been depressed since I was a teenager. But when I came out of it, my perspective and my values and my priorities changed drastically.

And the BIGGEST change, which I never saw coming: I like myself. That was never the case before for vast majority of my life. I’m still a fuck up and I still have my mental health challenges. But I’ve looked around a lot more lately and with a different pair of glasses and I frankly would rather hang out with myself than most people I meet every day. It’s not that I hold myself in high esteem. I just don’t feel broken anymore and it fucking pisses me off when people in Glass houses throw stones at me.

Now I think that I do have a disease. I’m on meds. I’ve gotten help. But I’m fucking done with people telling me I’m broken. I don’t care if it’s a doctor or either of my parents.